And It Burned
by Digital Senshi Sailor Who
Summary: A short oneshot detailing Dilandau's various dysfunctions. R&R, because everyone loves Dilly, right?


I can't claim exclusive ownership of anything herein. And you knew it. Take this however you will.

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Fanelia burned. Ashes and cinders and charcoal that smoldered were all that was left of it now. The gold and red penetrating the majestic palace brought the mighty structure to its royal knees, exacting Zaibach's dangerous vengeance. It was bright and clear and terrible that day, sun shining till the smoke of a dying nation choked it out forever.

Fanelia exploded. The people fled in all directions from the flame in living elemental fury, in a torrent, in a flood amidst the fire. Every animated spark died off, all pulsing hearts and flickering souls fading away with the certain death of safety and the birth of uncertainty. As if the buildings that they lived in, as if the things they owned held their lives' blood inside of them, the people of the city melted into nothingness, easy yielding like butter to the fires that cut them apart from one another.

Fanelia panicked, and in that moment, it ceased to be.

It delighted Dilandau. He liked it. The smell of bleeding flesh and burning bone set him, himself ablaze with something integral, something core, something that made him feel vibrantly and decidedly more alive than he'd ever been before. Drawing back after the fact had been a small death, though he knew no reason why.

"It was unnecessary to raze Fanelia to the ground."

Oh, think that, Strategos, but you were never there. They never meant to go that far, oh no, but things had turned that way when the first blood fell and lit something inside alight. It was all he could do to keep from killing his men as well in the fury, in the raw inferno that sparked inside of his body, making him warm and secure and powerful as a boy like him had never been before.

_I wanted to burn it all away. So I did._

It must have been like that, half-alive with embers and half-dead with silence, for a week. Dilandau felt the last spark dimly while away while he was in his bed, and it felt his heart was broken. No loyal lover's betrayal, no anything at all could elicit such a peaceful, quiet rupture in Dilandau Albatou the way his cooled incineration did. 

Castelo burned. Ashes and cinders and Allen Schezar's haughty pride blazed away there and he felt better after that. _Burn, burn it all down,_ he laughed to himself, and no one had the will or courage to question him. Even Folken silently bore the carnage from his vantage point, realizing that the boy commissioned to kill dragons was channelling the nature of his prey.

Escaflowne burnt his hand when he reached up to touch it, and though the shock threw him backwards to the floor, he only laughed and bore it. The sting let him know he was still alive and the tangy jolt of adreniline lit him up like something glorious. When he laid his eyes on Van Fanel, he feared he would burst and burn out and fade from the heat in his heart, but he liked it all the way down.

Van's eyes dared him to approach the king, and Dilandau's fuse leapt, blazing, in response. His heart combusted three-hundred fold that moment, beating fast enough to heat all his blood with the friction and bruising impact. His advance was deliberate and slow, but it belied the raging phoenix inside him, resurrected at last and resisting the prospect of extinction itself. Van was all chained up with nowhere to go, but that was not part of the game Dilandau had in mind. He broke the shackles holding the king there, not to make it fair but to make it exciting.

Dilandau's fire was hotter and brighter and better overall, thus he conquered. Then he left, sated and satisfied until the next day, when something burning awful in his body made him return for more. The third day, Van was gone. Folken had taken Dilandau's amusement away.

Van Fanel hated Dilandau for destroying his home and hated him for something worse. He bore the scars to prove the hurt where few people would see them, nursing some only on his mind, so he struck Dilandau Albatou in return.

Dilandau touched the wound against everyone else's better judgement. His face hurt every moment, except when he grew accustomed to the pain and he had to keep the numb lethargy at bay. His face stung and burned with clean-cut pain, and he knew that he was awake and with purpose so long as Van existed in the world to be unmade.

Fanelia burned in that wound, and festered there. It told Dilandau he was still alive.


End file.
